Recognize these guys? They lead the way in Sporting News' midseason NHL award selections. Find out who—and why—they're our picks.

Evgeni Malkin (AP Photo)

1. Hart Trophy

Evgeni Malkin leads the NHL with 58 points, which puts him in front of the field by three over Claude Giroux in the race for the Art Ross Trophy. The race for the Hart Trophy, awarded to the league’s MVP, is not nearly as close.

After a knee injury ended his 2010-11 season in February, Malkin has come back strong as ever; his 1.38 points per game average matches what he accomplished in 2008-09, when he led the league with 78 assists to go with 35 goals, then racked up 36 more points in 24 playoff games en route to winning the Stanley Cup.

All the more impressive is that Malkin has been carrying the Penguins through a season in which only six players have dressed for all 49 games. Malkin himself missed seven, while Sidney Crosby played just eight before going back down the concussion rabbit hole, preseason Norris Trophy candidate Kris Letang has missed 25 games and Jordan Staal has missed 15.

With all due respect to James Neal, who has emerged as a star in his own right this season, it is Malkin’s singular ability to take over a game with his powerful skating and smooth hands that have kept the Penguins contending in the Eastern Conference.

“Geno, this year, has been at a different level, right from training camp,” Penguins coach Dan Bylsma said earlier this month. “He did have a few games out with injury, but looking at the last two months, Sidney came back and went out again, so now we’re watching Malkin play at that level without Sidney and carry our team offensively in a lot of aspects. He’s been, for most of this year, really playing at another level. He’s been dominant on the ice, both ends of the rink, and he’s been maybe the best player in the league, most dominant player in the league, and he’s buoyed our team when we’ve gone through injuries.”

2. Vezina Trophy

Henrik Lundqvist is a three-time finalist for the Vezina, a two-time NHL leader in shutouts and an Olympic gold medalist. There is nothing new about the man between the pipes being the star of the show on Broadway, but this season the Swede has taken his game to another level.

Lundqvist is 22-10-4 with a .937 save percentage and 1.87 goals against average. The save percentage is 14 points better than the career high he posted last season, while Lundqvist is allowing 0.35 fewer goals per 60 minutes than he did in 2005-06, when he burst on the scene with 30 wins as a rookie.

While he does not technically lead the NHL in any statistical categories, Lundqvist’s save percentage and GAA are better than anyone who has played at least 25 games. The men ahead of him in both categories, All-Star Brian Elliott of the St. Louis Blues and regularly-used backup Tuukka Rask of the Boston Bruins, have combined to play in 41 games, only five more than Lundqvist.

Two goaltenders who have played less than half of their teams’ games, as well as one extra shutout by Los Angeles’ Jonathan Quick, have kept Lundqvist from topping the charts at the All-Star break. He still has a chance to lead the NHL in all three categories, and finally have his name engraved on the Vezina Trophy.

3. Norris Trophy

Naming the top defenseman in the NHL might be the hardest task of all for awards voters this season, with as strong a group of candidates for the Norris Trophy as there have ever been, starting with Nicklas Lidstrom’s bid to tie Bobby Orr’s record by getting his name on the award for an eighth time.

Lidstrom, who won the Norris last season, is having another strong season, as are 2010 winner Duncan Keith and 2009 honoree Zdeno Chara. The man who has a slight edge on all of them, though, would be a first-time winner: Shea Weber of the Nashville Predators.

Weber is third among defensemen with 34 points, has a plus-16 rating and despite playing a physical game with his 6-4, 232-pound frame, stays out of the penalty box—he has been charged with only 28 minutes’ worth of fouls this season.

What sets Weber apart, though, is the word contained in his position—defense. Of the defensemen who have played at least 30 games in the NHL this season, only 17 have had a lower rate of offensive zone starts than Weber’s 43.9 percent. Although his cannon blast of a slap shot has given him a reputation as an offensive defenseman, Weber also has played against opponents’ top guns, ranking 14th in the league in a statistic called Corsi Rel QoC that measures the quality of competition with regard to head-to-head ice time. Weber’s own relative Corsi rating—tracking how many shot attempts the Predators and their opponents register when he’s on the ice, compared to when he’s not—is the ninth-best in the league among defensemen at 12.1, and the best of anyone with fewer than 47 percent offensive zone starts.

The case can be made that Weber benefits from having Ryan Suter as a defense partner, a luxury that the other Norris contenders cannot boast. Weber’s performance is good enough on its own to warrant frontrunner status for the award, whether looking with the naked eye or through the lens of advanced statistics.

4. Calder Trophy

Despite not having played since January 2 due to a shoulder injury, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins leads all rookies with 35 points. The Calder Trophy is still very much there for the No. 1 pick of last June’s draft to win—he just has to get back on the ice.

If Nugent-Hopkins does win the Calder, he will be the first Oiler ever to win the NHL’s rookie of the year award. The same would go for either of the Philadelphia Flyers’ two candidates, Sean Couturier and Matt Read.

The pity of Nugent-Hopkins’ injury is that with 35 points in 38 games before he got hurt, the 18-year-old had a chance to become the fourth rookie this century to crack 80 points in a season, joining a few guys named Crosby, Malkin and Ovechkin. That is how bright the future is for Nugent-Hopkins, and the reason that even missing almost a month of action, he remains the cream of the rookie crop.

5. Adams Award

The Ottawa Senators have played 52 games this season and won 27 of them, only five fewer victories than they posted in the entire 2010-11 season.

The four players who will be hometown All-Stars this weekend all were part of last season’s disaster under Cory Clouston. The Senators’ surprising rise in the Eastern Conference is a product of a different kind of makeover—a stylistic one under new head coach Paul MacLean.

In his playing career with the St. Louis Blues, Winnipeg Jets and Detroit Red Wings, MacLean scored 324 goals in 719 games of fast-paced, high-scoring 1980s (and early 1990s) hockey. An All-Star in 1985, MacLean had eight 30-goal seasons, twice as many as Alfredsson in a thoroughly different era. Now, watching the Senators is like hopping in a time machine. The pace is fast, and the goals are plentiful—both ways.

With the Senators’ roster heavy on offensive talent even among its defensemen, and relying on journeyman Craig Anderson in net, Ottawa has gone for broke under MacLean, and so far it has worked. Ottawa is 28th in the league in goals against, which was to be expected entering the season, but the Senators are sixth in scoring because MacLean has them jumping on every opportunity to push toward the net.

MacLean is the biggest difference between a team that was a sad sack a year ago and one that is turning heads around the league now. That puts him at the front of the field in the race to be coach of the year.